Welcome to the Sands of MAUI—newsletter-style issues dedicated to bringing together the latest .NET MAUI content relevant to developers.
A particle of sand—tiny and innocuous. But put a lot of sand particles together and we have something big—a force to reckon with. It is the smallest grains of sand that often add up to form massive beaches, dunes and deserts.
.NET developers are excited with the reality of .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI)—the evolution of modern .NET cross-platform developer technology stack. With stable tooling and a rich ecosystem, .NET MAUI empowers developers to build native cross-platform apps for mobile/desktop from single shared codebase, while inviting web technologies in the mix.
While it may take a long flight to reach the sands of MAUI island, developer excitement around .NET MAUI is quite palpable with all the created content. Like the grains of sand, every piece of news/article/documentation/video/tutorial/livestream contributes toward developer experiences in .NET MAUI and we grow a community/ecosystem willing to learn and help.
Sands of MAUI is a humble attempt to collect all the .NET MAUI awesomeness in one place. Here’s what is noteworthy for the week of August 18, 2025:
.NET MAUI is the evolution of modern .NET cross-platform development stack, allowing developers to reach mobile and desktop form factors from a single shared codebase. Developers building modern app UI with .NET MAUI have a lot of ammunition at their disposal—the built-in framework abstractions and libraries like Progress Telerik UI, make a vast amount of UI available that works seamlessly across platforms.
However, there are times where developers need to draw something unique on screen—a control that does not exist or special shapes needed in apps. Fear not, as SkiaSharp can help, and Héctor Pérez wrote up a wonderful article—first steps with SkiaSharp in .NET MAUI.
SkiaSharp is a multi-platform 2D graphics API based on Google’s Skia graphics library. It can be used in .NET MAUI projects to render unique things on screen, like custom controls, non-symmetrical shapes, graphical effects and more. Getting started with SkiaSharp in .NET MAUI is easy—developers need to get the SkiaSharp.Views.Maui.Controls NuGet package, configure it and use SKCanvasView to render visual UI elements.
Héctor drives into the developer experience of using SkiaSharp, exploring the methods and drawing types exposed by the SKCanvas object—the APIs offer a lot of creativity. As only a true expert can, Héctor puts SkiaSharp on .NET MAUI through its paces—first drawing a face on canvas and then creating a custom toggle control with dual modes triggering state changes in the app. SkiaSharp is a powerful graphics library, and while it may not be everybody’s cup of tea in .NET MAUI, it can be useful for unique app UI needs. Cheers for the pointers, Héctor.
Modern .NET is powerful, open-source, cross-platform and welcoming to all, with mature tooling accompanied by rich ecosystems. With .NET settling on a yearly cadence, there are fresh new bits for developers every November—the work starts early in the year though. The .NET teams at Microsoft have been working toward the next iteration of .NET and have taken further steps—say hello to .NET 10 Preview 7.
The seventh preview release of .NET 10 adds some big enhancements across the .NET Runtime, SDK, libraries, C# and developer frameworks like ASP.NET Core, Blazor, Aspire, .NET MAUI, Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) and more. For .NET MAUI developers, the latest .NET release includes XAML Source Generators, MediaPicker EXIF support, SafeArea enhancements and lots of stability fixes.
As the year rolls along, .NET developers can expect a few more .NET 10 Previews, before we hit the Release Candidate phase and final General Availability in November. As the much beloved .NET and .NET MAUI frameworks head toward the next big release, developers will have much to stay tuned to—upwards and onwards.
Modern .NET moves fast and the next big milestone is already in the works: .NET 10 is scheduled for arrival in November 2025. Aligned with the release of .NET 10, .NET Conf is scheduled for Nov 11-13, 2025—a free three-day virtual event, hosted by the .NET team and developer community. With a worldwide audience, the goal is to showcase the breadth of modern .NET development across AI, cloud-native and cross-platform apps. Developer community is a big part of .NET Conf, and the call for content is now open.
With .NET 10, developers will see significant enhancements across .NET Libraries, Runtimes and SDKs, all toward building modern client, cloud native and intelligent apps. Tooling will get better with Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code, and C# continues to evolve to support the next generation of intelligent apps infused with AI.
As always, .NET Conf is a community effort—partnership between Microsoft, the .NET Foundation and awesome sponsors is what makes things happen. Over the course of the three days, .NET Conf will provide a wide selection of live and recorded sessions that feature speakers from the developer community and .NET team members. Aside from core .NET content, there will be lots of showcasing of cool things developers are doing with .NET—and plenty for .NET MAUI developers.
With all the wonderful updates across .NET 10, this year’s .NET Conf looks poised to be amazing—much to look forward to for .NET developers.
While .NET MAUI is squarely meant for developers to build native mobile/desktop apps, armed with modern smart WebViews, .NET MAUI is more than capable of welcoming web content to native land. In fact, web developers should feel empowered to bring web UI components, routing, styling and more to native cross-platform .NET MAUI apps, while gaining complete native platform API access. Blazor is particularly welcome in .NET MAUI, and Héctor Pérez wrote up a nice article to showcase a new Blazor UI—say hello to the Telerik Blazor TreeView UI control.
Modern app users demand rich consistent UX from web/native apps, and developers can use all the help. Blazor, .NET MAUI and Telerik UI are here to oblige. Héctor starts with the basics of the new Telerik Blazor TreeView UI component—a smart UI to visualize data in a hierarchical tree-like structure. Given the complexity of the UI, there are some nuances as to how the component binds to data, which could be flat or hierarchical with parent-child relationships.
Héctor walks through the developer experience, configures TreeViewBindings with sample data and explore APIs for developers to build a solid UX—a nice showcase for a modern Blazor UI that happens to work on web and native apps.
It is the age of AI, and there is a huge opportunity for developers to infuse apps with solutions powered by Generative AI and large/small language models. Modern AI is also a big opportunity to streamline and automate developer workflows for better productivity. However, a lot of things are changing fast in the AI world and developers may feel overwhelmed—context and choosing the right tools with AI really matter. The upcoming Progress Telerik webinar may help—unlocking developer productivity with AI.
While generic AI promises developer productivity, the reality too often is lost time as developers try to fix what AI models/agents got wrong—context and specialized expertise are really important. The webinar begins with an engaging panel discussion on some of the latest trends in AI, and on hook are some prominent AI practitioners/experts with real world experience—meet Brian Love, Christian Liebel, Lino Tadros, Mike Ryan and Spencer Schneidenbach.
The goal is to then dive into specialized AI tooling that brings contextual intelligence to developer fingertips. Seasoned developer advocates walk through the developer experience of leveraging Telerik/Kendo UI AI Coding Assistants for streamlined developer productivity. The webinar promises to be a great way to catch up on latest updates across AI models/agents and leveraging the right tools for the job to automate developer workflows—come join.
That’s it for now.
We’ll see you next week with more awesome content relevant to .NET MAUI.
Cheers, developers!
Sam Basu is a technologist, author, speaker, Microsoft MVP, gadget lover and Developer Advocacy Manager for Developer Tooling products. With a long developer background, he now spends much of his time advocating modern web/mobile/cloud development platforms on Microsoft/Telerik/Kendo UI technology stacks. His spare times call for travel, fast cars, cricket and culinary adventures with the family.